Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q)—the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s signature effort to lift the overall quality of health care in targeted communities, reduce racial and ethnic disparities, and provide models for national reform—is sponsoring a competition among technology developers to create game applications that generate useful health care quality data to improve health and health care.

The Game Challenge is the second in a series of innovation competitions sponsored by the Foundation through its Aligning Forces initiative. The first “app challenge” focused on creating applications to improve patient access to health care quality information. In the Game Challenge, competing developers are building upon data from AF4Q, the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program, and other databases to create game applications that engage patients and health providers in generating new quality data.

Five finalist teams were announced at the conclusion of Phase I of the Challenge. The finalist teams are now working to transform their game concepts into a working applications that aim to improve the player’s personal health and elevate the overall health of the community.

The Phase I finalist teams and their game concepts include:

Litesprite – Team members Swatee Surve, Meagan Causey, Solon Scott, Silvia Change, and Mark Currie will use evidence-based treatment methods to create a self-help game for people, especially women, with anxiety and depression.

Little Bird Games – Developers Lucas Blair and Danielle Chelles will develop My Fitness Badges, a game that empowers users to create and customize health and fitness badges based on an Aligning Forces for Quality dataset.

Slawdog – Chris Bartek will connect Fantasy Healthcare game players to providers by building a fantasy health care league that runs simulated football games based on datasets from Aligning Forces for Quality.

Team Wacie – Stacie Cregg will help players explore a map of Boston populated with games, mazes, and “monsters.” Avatars featured in the game will have abilities that correspond to Boston hospital performance.

WHealth – Developers Edward Kim and James Park will produce an interactive storytelling application that encourages healthy lifestyle modification. The game will show users their future selves and give predictions about their lives based on community data.

Winners will be announced in September 2013 and the first place winner will present at the annual Fall Health 2.0 Conference later that month.

Games To Generate Data Challenge

Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) is RWJF's signature effort to lift the overall quality of health care in targeted communities, reduce racial and ethnic disparities and provide models for national reform.